To Bee or Not to Bee?

What a great way to celebrate this years What's Buzzin' at your library theme by hosting a spelling bee! Huh? You ask. According to the film and publishing industry this seems to be the season of Bees. Some of you may have read Myla Goldberg's 2001 novel THE BEE SEASON or viewed the 2005 movie. Others may have seen the 2003 Oscar-nominated documentary SPELLBOUND that profiled the lives of 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee contestants with all of its intense and surprising comical moments. Perhaps you have been inspired to visit NY to see the current off-Broadway musical hit THE 25th ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE. And if none of these names sound familiar to you, this summer would be a great time to introduce yourself and your community to the latest development on all things related to this growing national phenomenon. Over the last 20 years, participation in the National Spelling Bee in Washington DC has doubled. With major sports channels like ESPN filming such dramatic footage of a 13-year old contestant fainting before judges only to regain composure to spell "a-l-o-p-e-c-o-i-d correctly in the 2004 competition, it's no wonder this academic event has spurred the interest of new viewers. Such viseral reaction also presented itself when a Rhode Island school spelling bee was canceled last month. Both parents and the community voiced their disappointment and concern so fervently that the school reversed its decision.

This summer creative librarians will have an opportunity to celebrate this American pastime in both film and literature. Today opening in theaters nationwide, AKEELAH & THE BEE (PG) features a story of a young inner city girl who overcomes her fear of ostracization and self-confidence to compete in the National Spelling Bee. Distributed by Starbucks Entertainment and Lionsgate films, this family movie will more than likely spark the reading and vocabulary building interest of beginning and avid readers this summer. This past Wednesday, I had an opportunity to preview the movie and I have to give this endearing film a thumbs up in reiterating the themes of literacy, family and community. This movie makes "..learning cool" as I overheard a young boy say as I walked out of the theater. *-) I look foward to seeing the response of kids and families this summer and am anxious to see what programs you might create from this response as we prepare for our theme. In the meantime, I would like to offer a motley list of young adult fiction and children's non-fiction titles revolving around the theme of (school) peer pressure, academia, self-empowerment and identity to include on your bibliography:

James McGuire's American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds (2005)

Matthew & Jennifer Rosenberg's The Geography Bee Complete Preparation Handbook: 1,001 Questions & Answers To Help You Win Again and Again (2002)

Michael Smith's World Trivia: The Book of Fascinating Facts: Culture, Politics & Geography (2002)

Edward Averett's The Rhyming Season (2005)

David Lubar's Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (2005)

Evelyn Coleman's Born in Sin (2001)

Martha Southgate's The Fall of Rome (2001)

Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl (2002)

Gordon Korman's Jake, Reinvented (2005)

Eliot Schrefer's Glamorous Diasters (2005)

Mariah Frederick's Crunch Time (2005)

Nan Willo Cappo's Cheating Lessons (2003)


If we can prolong movie-goers amusement this summer through our library programs, let's have fun in the process! To Bee or Not To Bee isn't the question--it's the answer.

Butterfly, Dragon and Wikis...OH MY!

There have been a few requests to recreate the window butterfly & dragon craft templates so we'd like to post these here for interested folk to download. *-) Our thanks to Carver public librarians Melissa Mcleod & Connie Kelly for offering these to the group.

We'd also like to thank Beth Gallaway of Metrowest and Janet Eckert of Western Region for creating an experimental summer reading wiki for all librarians to view or contribute. Here's the email from MassYac that announces the colloborative project:

For those of you looking for ideas for the MA 2006 Statewide Summer Reading Program, what's buzzin' at your library/tune in @ your library (TM), check out our statewide collaborative WIKI, with librarian-compiled booklists, model programs, a downloadable credit logo, customizable documents like press releases, links to craft projects and regional blogs, and more! We have storage space to host documents like storytime outlines or original templates as well. Thanks for not posting scans of copyrighted materials without permission, and for crediting sources!

To VIEW or ADD TO the wiki,
1. Email your consultant to receive the password.
2. Go to http://whatsbuzzinma06.pbwiki.com
3. Enter your first name: i.e."Beth"
4. Enter your email address: i.e. bethg@mmrls.org
5. Enter the password.
This allows us to track the changes made to the pages.

NOTE: If you log in to view or add anything, please make sure you LOG OUT when you are finished.

If you need help, scroll down to the bottom of the first page and click "WikiBasics. " Don't stress over formatting - someone will come along and make it pretty - that's the beauty of wikis!

Sincerely,
Beth Gallaway
For the Massachusetts Regional Library Systems


By all means, visit the Wiki! We are experimenting a little more this year and we would like to see how useful(or not) it may be all for future summer reading projects. If you want to know more about WIKIS, register for the Wednesday, June 7th Wild World of Wikis workshop at the SEMLS office at 10 a.m. To register, click here.

Bugging out!

I am exceedingly pleased that our April 11th summer reading roundtable was a great resource of craft and programs ideas, book suggestions and resources that could be shared by all! I would be remiss in not sharing the information with those who were not in attendance. So I am happy to be able to share this en mass on our SRP blog. Our crafty participants offered several titles that were perfect offerings for this year's theme. These include:

Great Books for Storytime
Leo Cockroach : Toy Tester by Kevin O’Malley

Some Smug Slug by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Creepy Crawlies (Learn All About, Grades 1-4) by Robin Bernard

Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider (Hardcover) by Doreen Cronin

Hey, Little Ant by Phillip M. Hoose

Ant Bully by John Nickle

Leo the Lightning Bug by Eric Drachman

Fireflies for Nathan by Shulamith Levey Oppenheim

Bugs in 3-D by Mark Blum

Invasion of the Giant Bugs : A Creepy-Crawly Adventure Story With 10 Hair-Raising Holograms by A.J. Wood

Insects from Outer Space (School & Library Binding) by Vladimir Vasilevich Vagin


Great Gift Ideas
Bugs: A Read-And-Do Book (Hello Reader Math) by Judith Moffatt

Creative Kids Craft Adventures (Creative Kids) by Terri Bose


and if you are looking for craft ideas to borrow or to buy prize incentives in bulk look to..

Rhode Island Novelty

Guildcraft Inc.

Enchanted Learning

I hope you find this information useful. We certainly had fun presenting it!